Posts Tagged With: Daoism

Grappling with the Ghosts Festival 搶孤 is held on the last day of the Ghost Month holiday. It’s a unique festival that celebrates the end to the trepidatious holiday when the dead are said to be walking the earth. Why people need to climb greased poles to celebrate this day is beyond me, but it sure is cool!!!

Longshan Temple 龍山寺 (aka Lungshan and Mengjia 艋舺龍山寺) is the oldest and most well-known temple in all of Taiwan. What’s truly wonderful about it, is that despite being a major tourist destination, Longshan Temple retains it’s charm and genuineness by remaining a place of daily worship. The area around Longshan can be quite interesting as well, and features traditional markets, calligraphers, traditional medicine shops, fortune tellers, and a place called Snake Alley. All these reasons and more are why Longshan Temple is on my list of must see places in Taipei.

Throngs of Buddhists and Daoists pack Longshan Temple in Taipei on Chinese Lunar New Year 2007.

Tainan, Taiwan (台南台灣) is a beautiful city in southern Taiwan. It one of Taiwan’s favorites as it has a nice climate and warm people. It’s also full of historical sites.

It’s the only one of Taiwan’s big cities that I’ve never visited so I thought I make a visit during the Chinese New Year break. I only spent about a day there but got to see most of the major sites and thought I’d share a few of the pictures:

Taiwan was once governed by the Dutch. They built several forts in Tainan to help control the occasional uprisings. Chihkan Tower 赤崁樓 (Fort Provintia) was built in 1653 and traded rulers hands several times over the centuries before being recently restored.

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Welcome to Taiwan photographer Neil Wade's not-so-personal, personal blog. The message I portray in it tends to wander from time to time but is always representative of my personal love for photography.

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